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Perhaps the greatest challenge humankind faces is to meet the basic needs all people on Earth in a way that is sustainable − in four dimensions: economic, social, political, and ecological. Another way to describe this challenge is: how can shortfalls in access to basic needs be eliminated while staying within the safe and just space for humanity – that is within ecological planetary boundaries (Daly, 2015; Raworth, 2017). A growing number of analysts argue that some planetary boundaries are already being breached (Scripts Institution of Oceanography, 2015), and an estimated 736 million people, or 10 percent of the world’s population, still lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) in 2015 (World Bank Group, 2018).
Current economic trends, driven by technology − including robotics, information technology, and artificial intelligence − increasingly threaten employment and social stability. Accelerating biotechnology and nanotechnology also pose political and ethical challenges. These trends are resulting in a move toward populist and authoritarian political systems to maintain or increase an unjust distribution of income and wealth, working against economic, social, political, and ecological sustainability. New public policies, including universal/unconditional basic income (UBI) as a human right and new forms of taxation to support it, are already needed. The urgency to implement such policies and will increase sharply as exponential technological change proceeds. Institutional development has lagged behind the accelerating pace of economic change led by exponential technologies. These technologies are powered by computing power that evolves at rates governed by Moore’s Law, namely that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years, with a corresponding increase in computing power and fall in its cost. Examples are robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.
A massive change in public opinion and policies is needed at the global level to leverage technological change to meet the sufficiency and sustainability challenge. Films and television programs in various formats can help build public awareness and shape needed public policies.
The size of film and TV markets is impressive. According to UNESCO, in 2015 almost 10,000 feature films were produced in 93 countries (retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/276748/average-daily-tv-viewing-time-per-person-in-selected-countries/).